Strangely, the best +/- on the Pistons was Kwame, +17 in only 16 minutes. AA was the worst on either team, -16 in 28 minutes.

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This is definitely one of those times when a stat is useless. Kwame only played in the first quarter mostly, when we pulled ahead by 12 to end the quarter. I really don't think he had much to do with it.

Well that was a whole lot of fun. The game was not that close really. We never pulled away, but we were always in control. Couple bad bounces here and there kept it close.

This was a gutsy win! Tay, Amir and Stuckey were exhausted at the end, but they ALL made plays down the stretch.

Tonight was a night where the BoxScore doesn't tell the story for AJ and AA. Even though AJ had 10/14/3, his defense is BANANAS!!!!!!! He should change his jersey number to 94, because he's all over the court. His transition D was awesome, his halfcourt D was fantastic...I really can't even describe it, he's not another Ben, his game tonight really looked Rodman-esque. AA played great ball denial on Kevin Martin, anybody notice that K-Mart didn't really do ANYTHING down the stretch?

On offense, Amir's on ball screens really make it go for AI and Stuckey, there were times downcourt where the kid would set 3-4 ball screens in one possesion and BOY did Stuckey take advantage!!!!!

Tay and AI were warriors tonight and Stuckey was just SICK!!!!! I mean seriously, he's Tha MuthaLovin TRUTH, I'm glad he got the keys sooner than later; good trade Joe.

Maxiel, we need to move him ASAP!!! He's a warrior, he's battling, in no way is he dogging it, but the 'gig is up'. Folks are wondering what's wrong with Max, NOTHING, teams have gotten the scouting report and have begun to render him useless. When he gets trapped inside among the trees rarely does he come up with the rebound. He's undersized and lately it's been killing us on the boards, teams know that as long as you put a body on him - he won't come up with the rebound; they also know to foul him instead of giving up a slam.

Yes, Sacramento is one of the poor teams in the league for sure. Still, thats 6 games in a row, and we beat a team while short three players. No Sheed, Dyess, nor Rip tonight.

Stuckey was awesome. A drive in there, a spectacular move here, an outside shot made there. And on and on. He would have gotten 40 maybe but he stepped out of bounds just before they were going to foul him and send him to the line at the end of the game. They mentioned his New Year's resolution was to score 40 this year. So close. I'll try to describe some of what he did. Driving his guy, he gets played for the drive, so he goes up in the air and hits a floater. How about an in the air spin move for a score. How about just driving thru a guy and calmly making his shot.

Next AI. When you think of these two together, AI and Stuckey, you might wonder, how are they sharing the ball. Just when the other team is focused on Stuckey, AI hits a shot. One of th biggest shots of the night was an AI shot on a feed from Stuckey as the whole Sacramento team was focused on Stuckey. As soon as they focus on Stuckey, AI takes over the game. AI scored 23, all but 7 in the 2nd half. AI makes some pretty nifty shots himself, like when you are sure Martin has him covered, he fades to the left, away from Martin, and cans the shot. Sure he missed some, especially in the 2nd half, but he sure made plenty of shots too. The best way I can describe the relationship between these two scorers - smooth. They smoothly switch from one to the next, neither ever having to drain his last drop of energy carrying all the scoring load. What an upliftin thing indeed, to know that you don't have to do it all; there is another guy to share the load.

Tay had a fine game, also getting about 23 points, and 10 rebounds. Yes, we played a lot of small ball too with him at power forward. We played the whole 1st quarter and the first four mintues of the 3rd quarter with Kwame, with a normal sized team. JMAX and Amir played as a pair of bigs to start the 2nd quarter, and for much of the 3rd quarter. We did not do so well with this in the 2nd quarter, but quite well in the 3rd quarter. Now, otherwise, we played small ball, with just JMAX or Amir in. The whole fourth, and maybe 7 minutes of the 2nd quarter.

Now, we had a 29-16 lead after one quarter. And that was with Kwame. It got to within one at the end of the half. We got about a 6 or 7 point lead with Kwame in to start the 3rd quarter, and Curry yanked the guy out of the game for good. So here he is, about plus 18 maybe for the game, and Curry won't go back to him. Anyway, Kwame's highlight was a dunk on an alley oop from AI. He also managed to get hold of a ball after fumbling it a bit and made a nice pass to Amir for the score. Kwame was particularly active around the boards, getting his hands on some balls at least even if not pulling in the rebound. I thought he was doing pretty well in all.

Oh, in contrast, without playing with a center, we were minus pretty heavily. Afflalo was in for a whole lot of that, and thus the negative showing for him. Nothing wrong with Afflalo's game, just with small ball. We gave up 18 offensive boards to Sacramento, and of course got into a lot foul difficulty for going small so much. Sac's free throw shooting indeed was the only thing that kept them in this one, along with way too many 2nd chance points.

Amir started out pretty darn strong. A dunk on a fast break was his highlight of the game. His 4th bucket of the first quarter, to go with 7 bounds that quarter, was an outside shot, just inside the 3 point line. I believe he shot two more outside shots in the 2nd half. Amir had some blocks too, ended up with a double double, 10 points, 14 boards. (35 minutes.) His last two points were clutch, cutting inside and slamming it home from a Stuckey pass. Man, poor Sactown. They were keying on both AI and Stuck, and lost track of Amir.

Afflalo did little besides just playing the D. But note, it was not just AI, Stuckey, and Tay he wanted to keep out there, and therefore not use a center. He wanted Afflalo out there as well. Remember, no Rip. So it was Afflalo Curry chose to play the small ball with. Kind of makes it more acceptable, and hey, we won the game. (But no, I'd rather see us take it easy on ourselves, and use a center as much as possible.)(with a power forward in too.)

JMAX. Not much really. Some blocks. A shot made from in front of the basket after he beat the zone by cutting thru it. Good D of course, good defensive rotation. He played plenty, and we won. Indeed, thats 4 out of 4 tonight, of our young group of starts getting solid minutes. Gotta love it.

I am going to take a wild guess and figure no way Stuckey is every going to come out of our starting unit now. He is doing it all. Basically terrorizing the other team. Remember once upon a time, Udrih (sp) could not stay on the floor in a SA Championship game vs. the Pistons? He could not play D. Tonight, same story. Stuck just burnt him to a crisp, and Sac just could not play the guy.

Herrmann did play. It was ugly. He actually fell down on one play when an opposing player juked him a bit. Nothing special. He just fell down. That was his lowlight, he had no highlights, unless you can call managing to hang on to a couple of rebounds against actual NBA players. Now, they just sent the other Walter down to the D-League. I hope that is to get him some floor time before he gets a tryout with us. We really need an actual NBA player to fill that depth spot for us at small / power forward. Acker went down too. I think, from past experience, they do this kind of thing prior to a West coast trip, knowing there will be little practice time during the trip.

Oh, and Herrmann was minus quite a bit, but hey, we were playing small ball, so I won't blame that on him.

Obviously, for anyone watching this game, the most enjoyable aspect has to be the emergence of Stuckey. He is just gaining confidence by the second, and he is already pretty darn good. If nothing else, this small ball thing has certainly helped the birth of an all-star in this league.

Well that was a whole lot of fun. The game was not that close really. We never pulled away, but we were always in control. Couple bad bounces here and there kept it close.

This was a gutsy win! Tay, Amir and Stuckey were exhausted at the end, but they ALL made plays down the stretch.

Tonight was a night where the BoxScore doesn't tell the story for AJ and AA. Even though AJ had 10/14/3, his defense is BANANAS!!!!!!! He should change his jersey number to 94, because he's all over the court. His transition D was awesome, his halfcourt D was fantastic...I really can't even describe it, he's not another Ben, his game tonight really looked Rodman-esque. AA played great ball denial on Kevin Martin, anybody notice that K-Mart didn't really do ANYTHING down the stretch?

On offense, Amir's on ball screens really make it go for AI and Stuckey, there were times downcourt where the kid would set 3-4 ball screens in one possesion and BOY did Stuckey take advantage!!!!!

Tay and AI were warriors tonight and Stuckey was just SICK!!!!! I mean seriously, he's Tha MuthaLovin TRUTH, I'm glad he got the keys sooner than later; good trade Joe.

Maxiel, we need to move him ASAP!!! He's a warrior, he's battling, in no way is he dogging it, but the 'gig is up'. Folks are wondering what's wrong with Max, NOTHING, teams have gotten the scouting report and have begun to render him useless. When he gets trapped inside among the trees rarely does he come up with the rebound. He's undersized and lately it's been killing us on the boards, teams know that as long as you put a body on him - he won't come up with the rebound; they also know to foul him instead of giving up a slam.

Great game, fun game, gutsy win.

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Please be advised, JMAX played center for much of this game. He is not a center. No fault of his for playing out of position. And yet, we won the game, with JMAX playing a lot, as we typically do when he plays a lot. I wonder if it has something to do with the amount of energy it takes to keep this young bull away from the boards.

Please be advised, JMAX played center for much of this game. He is not a center. No fault of his for playing out of position. And yet, we won the game, with JMAX playing a lot, as we typically do when he plays a lot. I wonder if it has something to do with the amount of energy it takes to keep this young bull away from the boards.

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I'll give you that Lee. Max did play a ton of center tonight, which is bad because right now he's struggling to play PF. Max is indeed a player that needs to play 15-20mins of "bull in a china shop" basketball. He needs to play with a legit center though, someone who carves out space. My concern is that Max struggles to secure rebounds by simply boxing his man out, we've been biten by this in the playoffs before too. 22 minutes and 2 rebounds.

Now, we had a 29-16 lead after one quarter. And that was with Kwame. It got to within one at the end of the half. We got about a 6 or 7 point lead with Kwame in to start the 3rd quarter, and Curry yanked the guy out of the game for good. So here he is, about plus 18 maybe for the game, and Curry won't go back to him. Anyway, Kwame's highlight was a dunk on an alley oop from AI. He also managed to get hold of a ball after fumbling it a bit and made a nice pass to Amir for the score. Kwame was particularly active around the boards, getting his hands on some balls at least even if not pulling in the rebound. I thought he was doing pretty well in all.

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I know that Kwame has offensive limitations (terrible hands), but Curry needs to let up on him. Every game that Kwame gets into, Curry gets into his face about a blown assignment (which is a coaches job), but Curry seems to have gone overboard with the Kwame humilation techniques. Give me a break. Curry needs to look at the glass half full because Kwame does positive things on the court. He is not Hermann. Unless a trade is made, they will need Kwame's rebounding and defense. I am still skeptical about Curry. I don't really like his attitude.

This was one of the few games where Afflalo was actually getting burned on occasion. At least twice with no screens or anything. It was weird to see. 2 of Herrmann's fouls were the direct result of AA's man getting by him. So, yeah, an awffl night for afllalo. I agree with Lee though, the SB thing was bogus again and all the players who were out there with Maxiell as the center (???) were going to look bad. And I'm not really going to blame Max for this, because the guy really is an undersized 4. Just a strange decision by MC to go away from Kwame when Brad Miller is killing us (25 and 16 for a dude that can't jump? come on, let Kwame knock him around a bit). And 8 offensive rebounds for Brad Miller?? We needed a boxer-outer people.

Oh yeah, I actually had the thought during this game that the AI-CB trade is working out. Maybe it's the pair of 40 points games within a 2-week period, or maybe it's the 10 and1's per game that Stuck is getting, or the superstar shots that AI is knocking down, I don't know.

I'm still very scared of MC's stubbornly bad theories, but maybe that will surprise me too as things progress.

One quick comment on Amir. This game was a perfect example of why he racks up so many fouls. He is guarding every single player on the opposing team. He's shadowing the dribbler at all times while keeping tabs on his man. He's making AI's defensive weakness a non-issue because AI's man sees Amir behind him. Combine that with Sheed or Kwame and we have paint protection.

I agree that Kwambe is not living up to his potential(the hands) but OMFG he has been getting the shaft by the refs too. At 5:31 seconds left in the first he got called for a 3 seconds in the paint. I re-wound it, and then again, then one more time and he was certainly not in the paint. He must have "I hate Effing Refs, they suck $%*k" painted on his forhead because he seems to get called for some BS.

As for J-Max, I have nothing negative to say after watching him(6'7) out jump 7' miller for that jump ball, which actually should of just been a charge against Miller. He also gets alot of balls tipped to whoever is there for the rebound so I think that his defensive presence is under appreciated. Plus he gets some good blocks to be sure, so I think JMax is a worthy Bench player. Not neccessarily a starter, but good for 10-15 a game at least.

Oh yeah did you guys see the two screens JMAx set up when Sac first went into zone defense. One lead to Tay's olley oop the other to JMax's little hook shot. Very nice.